Tante Marie Culinary Academy

School Description

As the UK's longest established independent cookery school, Tante Marie Culinary Academy has developed an internationally acclaimed reputation for excellence, with graduates running successful food businesses around the world.

At Tante Marie Culinary Academy we are focused entirely on teaching practical cookery skills in a state of the art environment which is supportive and fun, whilst also ensuring our students develop the high levels of discipline required to cook beautiful food to the highest standards. We are focused on ensuring our graduates leave us with a complete range of culinary skills which will enable them to adapt to any environment where food really matters, and to present themselves as highly skilled and inspirational cooks, with exciting career prospects ahead of them.

Tante Marie Culinary Academy is just 25 minutes from central London and our inspirational courses set the standards in culinary training.

Our professional chef courses and our Cordon Bleu Diploma qualification have put Tante Marie on the map as a leading cookery school and the CTH Level 4 Diploma in Professional Culinary Arts, created by Tante Marie and the Confederation of Tourism and Hospitality, is now one of the world’s leading professional cookery qualifications.

Graduates of our professional cookery courses showcase their skills in the award winning Restaurant at Tante Marie whilst undertaking a paid apprenticeship towards a hospitality management qualification and where members of the public can experience the very best of Tante Marie food in a relaxed, informal environment.

At Tante Marie Live, we offer a wide range of inspirational cookery courses, including evening cookery courses and kids cookery courses in a state-of-the-art new kitchen!

This school also offers:

Courses

Our 4 week Essential Skills Course is one of the world's leading programmes at this level. Over 4 weeks, students will learn a range of core skills across every area of cookery - butchery, bakery, international cuisines. Graduates leave with solid foundations in all areas of cookery to enable them to produce great food in any environment.
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4 Week Essential Skills
Our 4 week Essential Skills Course is one of the world's leading programmes at this level. Over 4 weeks, students will learn a range of core skills across every area of cookery - butchery, bakery, international cuisines... graduates leave with solid foundations in all areas of cookery to enable them to produce great food in any environment.
What Level Will I Be When I Graduate?
You only have to watch programmes like Professional Masterchef to realise how many cooks out there claim to be professionals, yet do not have the basic skills required to cook well. The core classics of basic cookery form the foundation of any great chef – skills such as making perfect Crème Anglaise, basic butchery, making pastry that melts in the mouth… These are, quite literally, the Essential Skills of cookery, which are covered on this course.
Tante Marie’s Essential Skills course differs from other short courses which run over a few days or weeks in that it does not just teach you how to cook a week’s worth of menus. Instead, it teaches core skills, with an emphasis on understanding how, and why things happen. This means that students can fully identify and understand what is happening to the food as they cook it, and can make adjustments as they go along.
The effect of this is that Tante Marie graduates are able not just to follow a recipe or copy a dish they have seen elsewhere, but have a complete ability to design their own menus, create their own dishes, and adapt their cooking skills to any environment.
Students who complete this course and want to go on an gain work whilst travelling are well placed to turn their hand to any area of a kitchen environment – be it pastry or cuisine. And, if you are interested in doing seasonal work on the back of this course, why limit yourself to only being able to cook a week’s worth of menus which you repeat time and time again, when Tante Marie will teach you how to design and structure your own menus!
Many of the students who complete this course, go on to do a ski season or other work whilst taking a year out – this provides an excellent way to utilise all the skills learned during the course and put them into practice in a real world professional environment. Our graduates are in high demand for their unsurpassed standards and professional discipline.
What Will I Learn?
Graduates from this course earn:
Chartered Institute of Environmental Health Level 2 Award in Food Safety in Catering
Tante Marie Cordon Bleu Essential Skills Certificate
The Tante Marie Cordon Bleu Essential Skills Certificate includes the following core subjects:
Professional kitchen practices
Food hygiene
Cakes, pastries and bakery
Meat, game and poultry
Fish preparation
Vegetables
Soups
Stocks and sauces
International cuisines
Knife skills
Presentation skills
Menu design
Costing and budgeting
Buffet catering
Canapés
Classic skills and modern techniques
As with all of our courses, the focus is on time spent in the kitchen, 'learning by doing!' The course consists of an introduction to working in a kitchen environment, followed by a phase of skill development. This will incorporate knife skills, familiarity with produce, and students will be introduced to a number of basic professional skills such as elementary butchery, fish preparation and pastry work, to an acceptable level. Students will also be trained in menu planning and presentation skills. A typical course schedule may be similar to this:
Week 1
Time management - cooking a roast to bring everything together perfectly
Basic butchery
Working with fish - skinning
Simple cakes and pastries - a range of mixing and cooking methods
Vegetables
Basic sauces and dressings
Menu design
Food Hygiene - CIEH Level 2
Week 2
Indian cookery
Stocks
Knife skills
Skill development - building on week 1
Butchery to a more technical level
Fish and shellfish - filleting
Baking and patisserie
Week 3
Advanced pastries
Roulades
Risottos
Mexican cuisine
Piping skills
Advanced bakery and patisserie
Week 4
Italian cuisine
Fresh pasta
Advanced pastries (continued...)
Advanced bakery (continued...)
Modern European cookery
Cooking for large groups - buffets and events
Graduation Lunch
Assessment on the 4 week Essential Skills Course is carried out through a process of continuous monitoring throughout the course.
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Diploma

This course is designed for those with little or no previous experience in the kitchen. The pace is designed to enable students to progress within their comfort zone and only when our experienced staff are satisfied that students have mastered an acceptable level of foundation skills, will we allow you to progress to a more advanced level.
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Cordon Bleu Diploma
This course is designed for those with little or no previous experience in the kitchen. The pace is designed to enable students to progress within their comfort zone and only when our experienced staff are satisfied that students have mastered an acceptable level of foundation skills, will we allow you to progress to a more advanced level… and then, when you are ready, we will really start getting into the fast paced, advanced, technical cooking! This course is most popular with those aged between 16 and 22.
For those looking for a career in food, the Tante Marie Cordon Bleu Diploma course is one of the worlds’ leading professional qualifications. The course also includes the CTH Level 4 Diploma in Professional Culinary Arts – a qualification which was created by Tante Marie in collaboration with the Confederation of Tourism and Hospitality.
Students graduating from our professional courses can earn both qualifications, making Tante Marie graduates some of the most highly qualified and sought after professionals working in the industry today.
What level will I be when I graduate?
This course will take graduates to a level whereby they are able to go and work in a professional kitchen environment, whether it be a restaurant, catering and events company, private household or any other food related environment, and can expect to ‘hit the ground running.’ Past students have gone on to careers as varied as private catering, ski chalet work, running delicatessens, restaurants, plus a great deal more, with many graduates going on to establish their own businesses within the hospitality sector. Some of our past graduates have used the skills and knowledge they have gained on this course to non-cooking roles, for example journalism, food photography, PR, events management, consultancy and recipe development and styling. Take a look at the Graduates section to get an idea of what our Cordon Bleu Diploma could do for you! We have extensive industry contacts and provide careers support to all of our students, even after you graduate!
The course is designed to offer graduates a faster progression through the ranks than they could otherwise expect – this course is quite literally a fast track to an exciting and rewarding career.
What will I learn?
For 60 years, our focus has been on highly skills focussed training. Tante Marie Culinary Academy graduates are versatile and with our Cordon Bleu Diploma you can expect to be able to go into any food environment and quickly adapt. Our goal is to provide you with a wide range of advanced skills. We’ve been doing it longer than anyone else and there is quite simply no substitute for experience!
Tante Marie’s Cordon Bleu Diploma is split into a Practical grade and a Theory grade, with a heavy emphasis (approximately 80% of the course) on time spent in the kitchen, cooking under the guidance of our experienced teaching staff.
Each term of our Cordon Bleu Diploma is run over 11 weeks and begins with a basic introduction to working in a kitchen environment including safety procedures and food hygiene. It then progresses into a program of ‘foundation skill development.’
By the end of the first term, (or second term on the 3 term course) students will be expected to be competent and confident in a broad range of intermediate level skills. Knife skills will be introduced in the first days of the course, which will be followed by a number of basic professional skills such as butchery, fish preparation and pastry work, to an acceptable level, prior to advancing onto the advanced, professional skills and techniques. Think of it as learning to walk before you learn to run. By taking this approach, our graduates have found they can adapt to any environment and still produce the highest standards of food.
Once the students have demonstrated mastery of the foundation skills, this is when things get technical! The skills and techniques developed in the first half of the course will be applied at an advanced technical level, to produce food that is to the standards expected of the hospitality sector at the highest level, including modern cookery techniques.
In the second half of your course you will learn advanced professional techniques and cooking methods, all taught in a modern contemporary manner, before progressing onto modern (and sometimes more ‘scientific’) cookery methods such as sous-vide. Over the entire course, you will learn everything from the classics to the modern – from basic to advanced levels – all taught in a contemporary manner, applicable to current trends and styles, across every area of cookery.
Assessment on the course is carried out through a process of continuous assessment in classes and a series of practical and theory exams – some of these are ‘blind’ exams where we set the menu and some are budget controlled tests where you get to decide what to cook – but most importantly, we provide extensive feedback through the course and after the exams, guiding you in the right direction to ensure you have the best possible learning opportunity!
In total there are 4 practical exams and 2 theory exams. Students will also create a portfolio of advanced menus for a range of different scenarios which forms part of the theory grade.
The course formally covers 12 different categories. Within each category you will cover an entire spectrum of skills, from the most basic to the most advanced, such as chocolate tempering, sugar craft and cake decorating, knife skills and events catering.
Stocks, sauces and dressings
Soups
Yeast products
Vegetables and salads
Meat, poultry and game
Fish and shellfish
Farinaceous dishes
Terrine dishes
Pastries, desserts and confectionary
Hors’ d’oeuvres and cocktail canapés
Professional kitchen skills and management
Menu planning
Students will also complete a 3 day wine course with Master of Wine, John Downes and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health Level 2 Award in Food Hygiene.
A number of qualified specialists will provide lectures and demonstrations on subjects such as butchery, sustainable seafood and guest chef demonstrations, and we will even guide you on running your own business! Put simply, upon successful completion of our Cordon Bleu Diploma, you will stand out from the crowd and be ready for your exciting future.
Start Dates
21/09/2016
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This course is designed for those who have some previous cookery experience. This could be either professional experience or simply cooking at home. Either way, the course progresses at a faster pace than the three term course, and students are expected to be able to tolerate a slightly more pressured and intensive learning environment.
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Intensive Cordon Bleu Diploma
This course is designed for those who have some previous cookery experience. This could be either professional experience or simply cooking at home. Either way, the course progresses at a faster pace than the three term course, and students are expected to be able to tolerate a slightly more pressured and intensive learning environment. Students are still given the same level of guidance and training as they would on the longer course and we still start with the most basic skills, but the pace and pressure of this course requires a certain level of previous experience. This course is most popular with those seeking a change of career, university graduates, or people who have previous cookery experience, be it in a professional kitchen or at home. The age range on this course can be anything from 20 to 70 years old!
Our Intensive Cordon Bleu Diploma is a fast paced course which requires commitment and dedication and for those wanting to get the best out of the course, it requires a certain amount of independent study. If you are unsure as to whether or not this course is more suitable for you than the three term course, we would encourage you to contact us to discuss your options.
What level will I be when I graduate?
This course will take graduates to a level whereby they are able to go and work in a professional kitchen environment, whether it be a restaurant, catering and events company, private household or any other food related environment, and can expect to ‘hit the ground running.’ Past students have gone on to careers as varied as private catering, ski chalet work, running delicatessens, restaurants, plus a great deal more, with many graduates going on to establish their own businesses within the hospitality sector. Some of our past graduates have used the skills and knowledge they have gained on this course to non-cooking roles, for example journalism, food photography, PR, events management, consultancy and recipe development and styling. Take a look at the Graduates section to get an idea of what our Cordon Bleu Diploma could do for you! We have extensive industry contacts and provide careers support to all of our students, even after you graduate!
The course is designed to offer graduates a faster progression through the ranks than they could otherwise expect – this course is quite literally a fast track to an exciting and rewarding career.
What will I learn?
For 60 years, our focus has been on highly skills focussed training. Tante Marie Culinary Academy graduates are versatile and with our Cordon Bleu Diploma you can expect to be able to go into any food environment and quickly adapt. Our goal is to provide you with a wide range of advanced skills. We’ve been doing it longer than anyone else and there is quite simply no substitute for experience!
Tante Marie’s Cordon Bleu Diploma is split into a Practical grade and a Theory grade, with a heavy emphasis (approximately 80% of the course) on time spent in the kitchen, cooking under the guidance of our experienced teaching staff.
Each term of our Cordon Bleu Diploma is run over 11 weeks and begins with a basic introduction to working in a kitchen environment including safety procedures and food hygiene. It then progresses into a program of ‘foundation skill development.’
By the end of the first term, (or second term on the 3 term course) students will be expected to be competent and confident in a broad range of intermediate level skills. Knife skills will be introduced in the first days of the course, which will be followed by a number of basic professional skills such as butchery, fish preparation and pastry work, to an acceptable level, prior to advancing onto the advanced, professional skills and techniques. Think of it as learning to walk before you learn to run. By taking this approach, our graduates have found they can adapt to any environment and still produce the highest standards of food.
Once the students have demonstrated mastery of the foundation skills, this is when things get technical! The skills and techniques developed in the first half of the course will be applied at an advanced technical level, to produce food that is to the standards expected of the hospitality sector at the highest level, including modern cookery techniques.
In the second half of your course you will learn advanced professional techniques and cooking methods, all taught in a modern contemporary manner, before progressing onto modern (and sometimes more ‘scientific’) cookery methods such as sous-vide. Over the entire course, you will learn everything from the classics to the modern – from basic to advanced levels – all taught in a contemporary manner, applicable to current trends and styles, across every area of cookery.
Assessment on the course is carried out through a process of continuous assessment in classes and a series of practical and theory exams – some of these are ‘blind’ exams where we set the menu and some are budget controlled tests where you get to decide what to cook – but most importantly, we provide extensive feedback through the course and after the exams, guiding you in the right direction to ensure you have the best possible learning opportunity!
In total there are 4 practical exams and 2 theory exams. Students will also create a portfolio of advanced menus for a range of different scenarios which forms part of the theory grade.
The course formally covers 12 different categories. Within each category you will cover an entire spectrum of skills, from the most basic to the most advanced, such as chocolate tempering, sugar craft and cake decorating, knife skills and events catering.
Stocks, sauces and dressings
Soups
Yeast products
Vegetables and salads
Meat, poultry and game
Fish and shellfish
Farinaceous dishes
Terrine dishes
Pastries, desserts and confectionary
Hors’ d’oeuvres and cocktail canapés
Professional kitchen skills and management
Menu planning
Students will also complete a 3 day wine course with Master of Wine, John Downes and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health Level 2 Award in Food Hygiene.
A number of qualified specialists will provide lectures and demonstrations on subjects such as butchery, sustainable seafood and guest chef demonstrations, and we will even guide you on running your own business! Put simply, upon successful completion of our Cordon Bleu Diploma, you will stand out from the crowd and be ready for your exciting future.
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Certificate

Tante Marie Culinary Academy’s Cordon Bleu Certificate has been running at the school since 1954, and is now recognised globally as one of the world’s leading foundation level culinary training programmes.
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Cordon Bleu Certificate
Tante Marie Culinary Academy’s Cordon Bleu Certificate has been running at the school since 1954, and is now recognised globally as one of the world’s leading foundation level culinary training programmes.
The practical and theory exams involved in this course result in students graduating with our internationally acclaimed Cordon Bleu Certificate – a qualification which will set graduates up with the skills and knowledge required to cook great food in any environment. In addition to this, graduates earn the CTH Level 2 Award in Culinary Skills, with no addition exams to sit.
The course is run over 1 academic term. This course is ideal for anyone who has an interest in food and wants to develop the skills and knowledge required to easily create dishes to professional standards.
Whether you are aiming to then go on to earn money as part of a year out, helping to fund your travels, or whether you simply want to cook great food at home, entertaining friends and family, this course will offer you a skill that will remain with you for life! Students must be over 16, but there is no upper age limit.
What Level Will I be when I graduate?
Many students who complete this course go on to gain some sort of work in the hospitality sector. Some students have even gone on to develop a career from this course, (although the career development would be slower than those who complete our Diploma course.)
What sets our Cordon Bleu Certificate course aside from other short courses which run over a few days or weeks is that our course does not just teach you how to cook a week’s worth of menus. Instead, it teaches core skills, with an emphasis on understanding how, and why things happen. This means that students can fully identify and understand what is happening to the food as they cook it, and can make adjustments as they go along.
The effect of this is that Tante Marie graduates are able not just to follow a recipe or copy a dish they have seen elsewhere, but have a complete ability to design their own menus, create their own dishes, and adapt their cooking skills to any environment.
Past students have gone on to careers as varied as private catering, ski chalet work, running delicatessens, plus a great deal more, with many graduates going on to establish their own businesses within the hospitality sector. Some of our past graduates have used the skills and knowledge they have gained on this course to non-cooking roles, for example journalism, food photography, PR, events management, consultancy and recipe development and styling.
Many of the students who complete this course, go on to do a ski season or other work whilst taking a year out – this provides an excellent way to utilise all the skills learned during the course and put them into practice in a real world professional environment. Our graduates are in high demand for their unsurpassed standards and professional discipline.
What Will I Learn?
Our Cordon Bleu Certificate is split into a Practical grade and a Theory grade, with a heavy emphasis (approximately 80% of the course) on time spent in the kitchen, cooking under the guidance of our experienced, qualified teaching staff.
Assessment on Tante Marie’s Cordon Bleu Certificate course consists of two practical exams. The first of these is planned ahead by the students and must be within a strictly controlled budget, giving students valuable experience of cost control and budgeting. The final exam is set immediately prior to the exam and students will be required to produce time management plans prior to executing the exam. In addition to this, there is a program of continual assessment and a theory exam.
Tante Marie’s Cordon Bleu Certificate is run over 1 academic term. The course consists of an introduction to working in a kitchen environment, followed by a phase of skill development. This will incorporate knife skills, familiarity with produce, and students will be expected to master a number of basic professional skills such as elementary butchery, fish preparation and pastry work, to an acceptable level.
Students will also be trained in menu planning and presentation skills as well as stock control and budgeting.
Students will undertake a 1 day wine course with our Master of Wine, John Downes, and will also complete the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health Level 2 Award in Food Safety in Catering.
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